[Please read the end of this diary before posting. Thanks.]
Every year, people across the nation become college basketball wonks and amateur pundits as they fill out scores of brackets and test their prognosticative skills in what is known as March Madness.
This year, however, the madness comes a month early. On Tuesday, 22 states hold their Democratic primaries and caucuses. Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama are engaged in a very tight race and Super Tuesday will be a critical step in the race to become the Democratic nominee for President of the United States. This is no doubt an important and historic event, unprecedented in many ways in our lifetimes. Nevertheless, I thought it might be fun to engage in the lighter side of this event, and invite all of you to channel your inner political punditry and try to predict the results in the Unofficial Daily Kos Super Tuesday Office Pool.
dKos Super Tuesday Office Pool
The rules are simple.
- For each state, predict the winner (hint: Clinton or Obama). Winner will be determined by ‘pledged delegate’ count.
- For each state, assign a ‘confidence number’ between 1 and 22. 22 should be assigned to the state for which you have the most confidence in predicting the winner. 1 should be assigned to the state prediction for which you have the least confidence. Use each number from 1-22 exactly once.
- The confidence numbers for all the states in which you correctly pick the winner will be added up to determine your total score. In the event that the candidates tie in delegates in a given state, half of your confidence score will be earned. A perfect score (picking the correct winner in all 22 states) is 253.
- Choose a tiebreaker ‘spread’, that is, who you think will win the most total delegates on Super Tuesday and how many more delegates that candidate will win than the candidate with the next highest number. Examples: Clinton +243 , Obama +178.
- The Kossack with the highest score (as calculated in rule #3) is the office pool winner. In the event of a tie, the entry with the most accurate tiebreaker spread will be the winner.
- Only one entry per user, please. Deadline for entries is 8:00am (EST), Tuesday, February 5th.
Entry Sheet
State – xx (confidence score 1-22) - Winner
AL xx Clinton Obama
AR xx Clinton Obama
AK xx Clinton Obama
AZ xx Clinton Obama
CA xx Clinton Obama
CO xx Clinton Obama
CT xx Clinton Obama
DE xx Clinton Obama
GA xx Clinton Obama
ID xx Clinton Obama
IL xx Clinton Obama
KS xx Clinton Obama
MA xx Clinton Obama
MN xx Clinton Obama
MO xx Clinton Obama
ND xx Clinton Obama
NJ xx Clinton Obama
NM xx Clinton Obama
NY xx Clinton Obama
OK xx Clinton Obama
TN xx Clinton Obama
UT xx Clinton Obama
Tiebreaker: Clinton Obama +xxx
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** Procedural and Formatting Requests ** Please follow instructions.
Submitting your entry
- Please only reply directly to the diary when submitting your entries. Please do not reply to someone else’s entry. Please do not reply to the tip jar with an entry.
- To submit your entry, please copy and paste the above list of states. Change xx to your confidence score. Delete one of the candidate names. This is your entry.
- You will be responsible for calculating your own scores on Wednesday or late Tuesday. Reply to your own entry with your total score.
- For discussion, please keep comments as replies within the tip jar. Please no policy talk or candidate wars. Try to keep the discussion limited to the spirit of this game.
And please recommend diary if you participate or just like the idea.